Valencia: After finishing ninth in this weekend’s European Grand Prix, Sauber has been left lamenting missed opportunities and Sergio Perez has urged his team to improve dramatically.
The Mexican started from 15th place on the grid for the second race running and finished with two points to make the top ten, but knows full well that the Swiss team has much to improve on. "It was a difficult race," said Perez. "We risked quite a lot with our strategy and in the end the tyre degradation was huge.
"You can say two points are not a bad result if you've came from 15th on the grid, but the most important thing now is to improve our qualifying performance. I was 15th on the grid for the second consecutive race and there is a lot more to achieve if I could only start further up the grid."
Perez’s team-mate Kamui Kobayashi suffered two incidents with Bruno Senna and Felipe Massa which cost him a potential fourth place finish. The Japanese driver will lose five places on the starting grid of the British Grand Prix.
"I am very disappointed. I definitely had a good start from seventh. I made up two positions straight away and then overtook Pastor Maldonado on lap one. I was fourth and it looked promising. Then at my first pit stop after 14 laps we had a problem with the front left wheel,” he said. "After that I was 11th and still had a good chance. On lap 20 I was following Kimi Raikkonen, who was overtaking Bruno Senna, and then was on the inside next to Senna. I had the wall and nowhere to go when we touched. I had to pit for a nose change.”
Team Principal Peter Sauber was also left disappointed. “From my perspective it was a race of missed opportunities,” he said. “Things went against us today and in the end we had to be satisfied with getting just the two points Sergio scored. Kamui was unlucky when he was hit by Bruno Senna - he couldn’t benefit from his great qualifying performance.”
Sauber are currently at sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship and has extended its gap over Williams by one point to 15.
Comments
0 comment